


Until What?

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [4]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Capable's from Gastown, Gen, daemon AU, earned names, people are for trading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:56:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5315942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable grew up with gas fumes in her lungs and asphalt under her feet. She grew up knowing people could be bought and sold for a liter of water, and she loved them anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until What?

 

She was just the Girl, the Redhead, or the Brat, depending on who in the People-Eater’s entourage she was talking to. She was kept close by, given food and water only a little sour with the lung-choking fumes that were Gastown’s curse, protected from the oil-coated, desperate hands of the Gastown Wretched. She was never given a name. 

She was told that she would have to earn her keep until... something. ‘Until’ lingered at the ends of all the sentences around her, becoming an echo that, eventually, she just learned to tune out. So until _until_ became _now_ , she was a message runner for the sprawling, rotting bureaucracy in Gastown’s upper echelons.

Her daemon was Caelai, was the smoke and the fog and the vent systems that Capable learned before she was ten. Caelai liked to take small shapes, kestrels and lightning-quick lizards and hares that could warn Capable when someone was coming with a loud thump of her foot. The two of them ran papers and words and even bullets back and forth through the refinery towers until they could have done their route blind-folded. And in the end they couldn’t remember when ‘capable’ turned from a adverb to a noun. 

“That capable one, the red-head.”

“Capable, that’s the one.”

“Capable, get over here girl, you’re needed.”

It was a good name, the two of them decided. It fit her. 

Capable was good at her job, and that was enough to save her more than the occasional slap or kick. She was running, always running, but sometimes Caelai saw something, a shooting or a beating or a rape of Gastown’s Wretched, and no one forced them to look. She could have turned aside. But she would not be Capable if she did that. 

She crept down, and put together what pieces she could, and offered her wilted greens to the living, and gave honor to the dead. She touched people, and wasn’t afraid. She saw people, and they did not care, mostly. There were times she had to run again, dodging grasping, desperate hands and losing the breath in her lungs to fists that sought to lay her out. 

She was Capable, though. She was good at her job. 

 

_Until_ came for her when she was, at her own estimation, seventeen. Caelai had settled into a graceful hare over a thousand days ago, fur smooth and gleaming even in the hazy Gastown sun. Just after that, a black-faced Imperator had brought her to the People-Eater, had sat her at his festering feet, and she had answered all his questions about how she spent her days. 

She’d known the People-Eater only by reputation. He was the bogey-man in every Gastown shanty – keep quiet or the People-Eater’ll get you. She’d eaten the jerky they gave her for rations and tried not to think about where it came from. She’d smelled rich smoke on the breeze, and had known what areas of Town to avoid. 

Mostly, what she knew of the People-Eater were his accounts. Those were the numbers she carried back and forth across the refineries, to the closest pumps and to the work stations. Mostly, she knew how tightly he held on to goods he owned, and how heartlessly he’d calculated what he needed to keep the Wretched working. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t enough to live on. But that didn’t matter to him; there were always more Wretched. 

So Capable sat, and answered, and put a hand on Caelai’s back, and knew from the hare’s trembling how much she hated the fat man, in his faded suit, clinging to every penny he could while the people around him starved and scraped. 

 

_Until_ comes for her in the shape of a Citadel patrol, and the metal arm of an Imperator. Capable is summoned to the outer wall, where metal and concrete are piled up into a place where flamers can stand, and lancers can throw from. She stands there, above the Citadel patrol, not even a War Rig come to fetch her, just ten cars and three bikes and more than twenty War Boys to leer up at her. 

“It’s all in order,” the Gastown Imperator is standing down there, nearly head-to-head with a Citadel full-life. For the first few moments Capable doesn’t even recognize that she is female; breasts bound flat and hair buzzed as short as any War Boy’s, her body language isn’t just steady in the face of danger, it’s _mean_. Tight with violence, and that three-fingered hand gleaming like knives in the sun. “She buys us a year’s worth of green. And fifty full loads of aqua-cola.” 

“The agreement was for twenty loads,” the Citadel Imperator says, and her voice is the harsh growl of a bike over gravel. Caelai presses herself close to Capable’s leg, her ears trembling. 

“That agreement was made when she was a scrawny brat. It’s different now. She’s worth fifty.”

“You’ll get what was agreed on. Or you’ll get nothing.” The Imperator shifts her weight back, and she doesn’t make another move but behind her War Boys are suddenly shouting and bristling with guns, all of them pointed at the Gastown Imperator. Capable realizes suddenly that she doesn’t know his name, wonders how long he’s been serving. War Boys usually pass through too fast for her to learn them, not that she doesn’t try, but Imperators she knows. This one she doesn’t. 

If he dies in the next few seconds, she doesn’t know if she’ll forgive herself for not knowing his name. 

“You know they’re talking about us,” Caelai whispers, pressing herself to Capable’s leg. “Capable. They’re talking about us.”

“I know.” Capable says through numb lips. _Until_ has come for her, and she is moving through a vat of cooling tar. “What do we do?”

“We run,” Caelai hisses, her voice no louder than the faintest desert breeze. “We run, and don’t let them catch us.” 

But Capable has not so much as finished turning around when a shot rings out over the wall, and a bullet brushes so close to her it steals a lock of blood-red hair. She freezes, doesn’t dare to breathe, and the Imperator with the metal arm hammers out her terms. 

“You’ll take twenty loads of aqua-cola and a year’s worth of green. Or you can explain to the People Eater why the Citadel stopped delivering to Gastown.”

The other Imperator must look like he’s going to say something, because Capable hears the click of a gun ready to shoot, and Caelai trembles on the rocks. “And you can explain why your trade isn’t any use to the Immortan anymore.”

Capable holds her breath for as long as she can, looking out over the shanties and the Fourth Refinery. She can see the lookout towers to the south, where she’s run a thousand times just since Caelai settled, and ten thousand times before that. She watches the Pumpers and the Black-thumbs and the Spikers who haven’t even looked up at the wall to see what’s going on. It feels like her heart will pound its way out of her chest, but all she can do is listen to the absolute silence that has fallen outside the gates. 

Then, “Fine. Have it your way, _Imperator_.” 

Capable doesn’t dare look, but she hears two Gastown boys step close across the rocks, and she cannot help but flinch when the female Imperator snaps out, “Not you,” as unforgiving as bullets. And Capable holds still, even when chalk-white hands close around her elbows. The Citadel War Boys are strange, almost reverent, and they allow her to scoop Caelai up in her arms before they take her down to where the Imperators are waiting. Capable swears to herself she will not cry. She looks the metal-armed Imperator in the face and only flinches a little, and the War Boys lift her up into one of the cars like she’s as delicate as the glass figurines the People Eater keeps in his penthouse. 

All the way to the Citadel, with Caelai clutched to her chest, Capable does not cry. She cannot help her trembling. It might come from the thrum of the engine on the road, or the shaking of the sky. It does not come from her alone.

The Imperator, who drives with her metal hand curled almost carefully around the wheel, does not so much as glance at the prize she has won. The skeleton boy next to her is not so detached – he keeps sneaking looks back at her, all the awe of a child in his eyes. Capable tries not to look at him. She is not sure what to make of these reverent jailers, when the most the smoke-blackened Wretched have ever shown her is disbelieving gratitude. 

Caelai is the one who gasps when the green caps of the Citadel come into sight. The War Boy turns to look back at her and smile, all proud, but the Imperator only guns the engine and skids to a perfect stop outside a gaping cave in one of the towers. 

“You know what to do,” she says, already sliding out of the car, looking at anything but the shivering girl in her back seat. “Take her to Organic. Primus runs it from there.”

“Sure thing Boss.” The War Boy looks back at her and smiles again. Only this time all Capable sees is the grin of a skull, and Caelai hisses her bright hare’s hiss, and the War Boy takes no notice of their fear at all. 

 

 


End file.
